Writing to Congress

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Many of us are angry and despairing at the political landscape, especially with the recent unprecedented threats to democracy itself in the United States.

Let's pool our brains and amplify our influence! Letters and phone calls to our elected officials make an impact, even if they don't always do what we ask, since they're ultimately concerned about "reelection, reelection, reelection".

Especially with help from our friends, it's not difficult to write letters calling for specific actions and telling powerful stories. We can share talking points, drafts, and letters we've sent, as well as problems we encounter and replies we get.

(The title refers to the U.S. system, but you're welcome to share how you're communicating with your elected officials in any country.)

If you read this group and haven't joined it, please consider joining! It'll encourage other AN members to be more politically active.

Two hundred years ago the founding fathers created three branches of government, assuming that one party wouldn't dominate all three at once, and assuming that the legislative and executive branch actually wanted to govern the country as a…Continue

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H.R. 10, the bill that would repeal key Dodd-Frank consumer protections, and risk a repeat of the 2008 recession for the sake of increased big bank profits, is coming before the House for a vote this week.

I called my (Democratic) congressman about it today; all of our Representatives need to hear from us!

I urge you to oppose H.R. 2213, the Boots on the Border Act, to meet Trump’s demand for an additional 5,000 Border Patrol agents, especially eliminating the polygraph testing requirement for applicants who are already law enforcement officers or are transitioning members of the US Armed Forces (including veterans). Currently, 60% of Border Patrol applicants fail the polygraph screening. One analysis of 1,000 exams showed that the failures were largely due to criminal behavior, including smuggling and other felonies. Importantly, some applicants actually worked for criminal organizations and were seeking to infiltrate the Border Patrol. Without the polygraph screening, these applicants all would have passed the standard criminal background check.

I urge you to support a complete overhaul of our voter security, in light of the VR systems Russian hack and the fact that voter touchscreen use was associated with a statistically significant bias toward Trump in the last election.

I urge you to oppose Trump’s proposal to split air traffic control away from the Federal Aviation Administration and place it under a private, non-governmental entity. His original proposal for a $1 trillion infrastructure jobs plan sounded good in principle. In reality, Trump’s jobs agenda is a sham that does not involve a trillion dollars, won't do much for the country's infrastructure and won’t create many jobs. The infrastructure initiative he launched with a fake signing ceremony bears all the marks of a large-scale bait and switch sales pitch like the one Trump perfected in selling fraudulent enterprises like the now-defunct Trump University to unsuspecting consumers.

Trump’s 2018 budget seeks to cut $175 million from the Essential Air Services program, which subsidizes air travel to remote areas, so that all regions of the country are guaranteed air access, even Hawaii and Alaska. If approved, Trump’s budget proposal would actually dismantle one feature of the current air travel infrastructure that serves rural Americans. Trump’s air traffic privatization scheme is less concerned with creating jobs than with selling the idea of “public-private partnerships” as the way to rebuild the country’s infrastructure. The New York Times notes that the Trump approach calls on "states, cities and corporations to shoulder most of the cost of rebuilding roads, bridges, railways and waterways." Trump has swapped out serious ideas for a jobs program with a scheme to turn over public infrastructure assets to private interests, which would be able to extract profits under the flimsiest of supervision. Texas just rejected a similar public-private partnership because of public opposition to the new highway tolls it would impose.

We’re on an unsustainable path toward civilization collapse. According to findings of Safa Motesharrei, a systems scientist at the University of Maryland, who uses computer models to understand the mechanisms that can lead to local or global collapse, there are two factorsthat matter: ecological strain and economic stratification. GOP policy intentionally causes both.

One flagrant example of directly widening inequality in America is the House Republicans' AHCA. It gives a new $880 billion tax cut to health care corporations and wealthy investors. By taking from the needy and giving to the rich, this one bill would further widen economic disparity in our country by nearly $1.8 trillion. Another way to ensure economic inequality by taking from the needy and giving to the rich is so called trade deals like the North American Free Trade Agreement. A recently-leaked copy of Trump’s NAFTA renegotiation plan shows it gives even more power to multinational corporations. The plan includes new "investor incentives" to offshore thousands more of our middle-class jobs.

Texas illustrates what the GOP has in mind for poverty nationwide. Nearly one in four kids live below the poverty line. Single-mother households are 42 percent of Texas families living in poverty. Texas has highest maternal mortality rate in the developed world. As the Republican-led Texas legislature slashed funding to reproductive healthcare clinics, the maternal mortality rate doubled over just a two-year period.

Unless nations around the world boost carbon taxes to as much as $100 per metric ton, the world risks global warming at “catastrophic” levels within 13 years warned a new report by leading economists from the High Level Commission on Carbon Prices (backed by the International Monetary Fund and World Bank). The catastrophic consequences of climate change won’t just happen in 13 years in a time-limited event. We face ever-increasing global catastrophe on a radically changed planet. How old will your children and grandchildren be when the Earth turns permanently nasty?

By embracing inequality and climate denial, the GOP renders its own demise. No gerrymandering, no media echo-chamber, no destruction of constitutional rights, no billion-dollar attack ad campaign, no Cambridge Analytica manipulations will prevent the party’s collapse when inequality soars while the Earth itself turns on us. No fake news will keep the Trump base from tasting their betrayal. The international community responded with contempt to our abandonment of the Paris Accords and our empowering climate deniers in our government. Contempt for the GOP will become universal.

I urge you to fight the GOP priorities of greater inequality and climate denial with everything you’ve got!

I urge you to communicate to colleagues and the public the extreme hazard of the GOP policies of accelerating inequality and climate change.

We’re on an unsustainable path toward civilization collapse. According to findings of Safa Motesharrei, a systems scientist at the University of Maryland, who uses computer models to understand the mechanisms that can lead to local or global collapse, there are two factorsthat matter: ecological strain and economic stratification. GOP policy intentionally causes both.

One flagrant example of directly widening inequality in America is the House Republicans' AHCA. It gives a new $880 billion tax cut to health care corporations and wealthy investors. By taking from the needy and giving to the rich, this one bill would further widen economic disparity in our country by nearly $1.8 trillion. Another way to ensure economic inequality by taking from the needy and giving to the rich is so called trade deals like the North American Free Trade Agreement. A recently-leaked copy of Trump’s NAFTA renegotiation plan shows it gives even more power to multinational corporations. The plan includes new "investor incentives" to offshore thousands more of our middle-class jobs.

Texas illustrates what the GOP has in mind for poverty nationwide. Nearly one in four kids live below the poverty line. Single-mother households are 42 percent of Texas families living in poverty. Texas has highest maternal mortality rate in the developed world. As the Republican-led Texas legislature slashed funding to reproductive healthcare clinics, the maternal mortality rate doubled over just a two-year period.

Unless nations around the world boost carbon taxes to as much as $100 per metric ton, the world risks global warming at “catastrophic” levels within 13 years warned a new report by leading economists from the High Level Commission on Carbon Prices (backed by the International Monetary Fund and World Bank). The catastrophic consequences of climate change won’t just happen in 13 years in a time-limited event. We face ever-increasing global catastrophe on a radically changed planet. How old will your children and grandchildren be when the Earth turns permanently nasty?

By embracing inequality and climate denial, the GOP renders its own demise. No gerrymandering, no media echo-chamber, no destruction of constitutional rights, no billion-dollar attack ad campaign, no Cambridge Analytica manipulations will prevent the party’s collapse when inequality soars while the Earth itself turns on us. No fake news will keep the Trump base from tasting their betrayal. The international community responded with contempt to our abandonment of the Paris Accords and our empowering climate deniers in our government. Contempt for the GOP will become universal.

I urge you to call for a second Special Prosecutor to get to the bottom of the Trump administration's growing conflict of interest scandals. Trump and his close associates have turned their backs on ethical norms and the anti-corruption protections written into the US Constitution and federal law in a way we haven’t seen in modern times. Congress needs to insist on the appointment of another special counsel to handle a whole host of White House corruption issues. The same grounds for Sessions’ recusal from Russiagate (which he brazenly ignored) and the appointment of Mueller as special counsel apply to how DOJ handles political profiteering in the White House. As a close friend and key adviser to Trump, Sessions must recuse himself from all legal investigations involving the president and his inner circle under the Department of Justice’s own rules. DOJ regulations require recusal when an employee has a “personal or political relationship” with “any person or organization” that is either “the subject of an investigation or prosecution” or “has a specific and substantial interest that would be directly affected by the outcome of the investigation or prosecution.” Sessions’ personal and political relationship with the president is well established at this point, and it is clear that an indictment of a member of the president’s family, a close adviser or even a Cabinet-level appointee would have a significant adverse impact on the president’s public image, political fortunes and ability to conduct government business. I urge you to call for a second special prosecutor to investigate political profiteering in the White House and demand that Sessions recuse himself from these investigations.

Trump's budget director Mick Mulvaney rejected Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin's call for a clean debt ceiling hike. Mulvaney doesn’t think any future budgets could balance without what he calls “reforms” to Medicare and Social Security. I call on you to object to framing the destruction of Medicare and Social Security as “reforms”!Oppose any budget that isn’t “clean”.

I urge you to object to the new questionnaire for U.S. visa applicants worldwide that asks for social media handles for the last five years and biographical information going back 15 years. The new questions, part of an effort to tighten vetting of would-be visitors to the United States, was approved on May 23 by the Office of Management and Budget. Immigration lawyers and advocates say the request for 15 years of detailed biographical information, as well as the expectation that applicants remember all their social media handles, is likely to catch applicants who make innocent mistakes or do not remember all the information requested. The new questions grant "arbitrary power" to consular officials to determine who gets a visa with no effective check on their decisions. What about the golden rule? Should other countries to pass laws imposing such unfair and onerous demands on US citizens seeking visas?

I urge you to introduce a bill to modify Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects websites from being sued for content posted by a third party, to exclude protection of child sex trafficking. Thanks to the efforts of special interest groups the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), funded by tech industry giants Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and others, federal judges have expanded this law to protect websites that facilitate child sex trafficking. Young girls are being bought and sold on the classified ads site, Backpage.com. It’s a website making hundreds of millions of dollars a year off of human trafficking and exploitation of young girls. When sex-trafficked girls escape and sue Backpage, their cases are dismissed, even though a 21-month Senate investigation revealed that Backpage facilitated the crimes by coaching pimps on how to post ads to evade law enforcement.

I urge you to oppose the crackdown on free speech and civil rights underway across the country. Legal actions such as the additional charges against the 212 protesters by the Superior Court of the District of Columbia including urging to riot, conspiracy to riot and destruction of property, directly target anti-Trump protest movements and infringe on the demonstrators' First Amendment rights. 18 states have proposed over 30 bills aimed at suppressing demonstrations by increasing and expanding penalties for protesters. A new law in Missouri prohibits protesters from covering their faces with masks or other disguises. Florida, Tennessee, Georgia and Iowa have introduced bills that call for increased penalties for blocking traffic and demonstrating on private property. We need a federal law to prohibit such abuses!

I urge you to oppose Devos’ push for vouchers, which is a gateway to send whites to private schools - a back door return to school segregation. Federal money should never support schools that refuse minority students.

I urge you to oppose the portions of the Trump budget that rolls back civil rights.

The Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice loses at least 121 positions.

The Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Program – in charge of policing against discrimination by companies with federal contracts – would be eliminated altogether.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s environmental justice program – which combats higher rates of pollution in communities of color – would be eliminated.

The Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights would be drastically cut.

I urge you to oppose H.R.1423 - National Flood Insurance Program Reauthorization and Improvement Act of 2017. Reject the NFIP reauthorization and its debt forgiveness, until it’s based on climate science. The NFIP was intended in part to steer development away from vulnerable floodplains. The federal insurance program does the opposite by subsidizing thousands of risky properties along the coast by charging them below-market premiums, bankrupting the NFIP fund. It owes the U.S. Treasury nearly $25 billion – money it borrowed from federal taxpayers to cover its obligations. The only way coastal communities will stop self-inflicted climate change flood damage is to stop incentivizing doomed capital investment there, especially for repetitive loss properties. Nearly 5 million people live less than 4 feet above high tide, and six feet of sea level rise is expected by century’s end. The government can’t afford to endlessly rebuild million dollar second homes. The budget eliminates funding for an ongoing effort to improve and redraw the nation's flood maps. This “alternate-fact” flood preparation is insane.

Trump made sure that America’s time as leader of the free world is over. Now we’re the villain, a greedy myopic country that killed humanity’s last, best hope of avoiding catastrophic climate change. The list of unethical and illegal behavior by President Trump and associates is too long for one letter. Corporations make billions from U.S. research and education, then turn around and cheat us on taxes, and Republicans push for them to get more tax breaks. Trump and his close associates disdain ethical norms and the anti-corruption protections written into the US Constitution and federal law. Trump gets to keep racking up the profits–and the conflicts–while serving as president, and then step right back into the business the day after he leaves the White House. While Trump and his family were in Saudi Arabia, the Saudis and the United Arab Emirates announced they’ll donate $100 million to Ivanka Trump’s charity. Jared Kushner will not divest himself of 90 percent of his real estate assets, held by a myriad of shell companies that make monitoring conflicts nearly impossible. Donald Trump has exempted his entire senior staff from provisions of his own ethics rules to allow them to work with political and advocacy groups that support the administration. Ethics rules have also been waived for every other “commissioned officer”—staffers who report directly to the president—in the White House who has worked for a political group in the past two years. Trump is essentially promoting White House staffer collaboration with pro-Trump advocacy operations. The West Wing is stacked with officials who have made significant sums working, consulting for, or representing high-profile political organizations and advocating for special interests. He still refuses to disclose all ethics waivers issued to appointees administration-wide. Trump has also ordered federal agencies to spurn ranking Democratic lawmakers' oversight requests. The president's personal lawyer Michael Cohen rejected a request to cooperate voluntarily with probes into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Trump's administration will cease answering questions from reporters about all areas under investigation into the Trump campaign's alleged ties to Russia. How does an entire administration “lawyer up” with Michael Cohen? Their behavior shouts that, “Trump and his buddies are GUILTY, GUILTY, GUILTY!” I urge you to counter this GOPwickedness and fight for honest government.

Trump made sure that America’s time as leader of the free world is over. Now we’re the villain, a greedy myopic country that killed humanity’s last, best hope of avoiding catastrophic climate change. Shame that you have consistently supported his whole villainous agenda! Corporations make billions from U.S. research and education, then turn around and cheat us on taxes. Republicans push for corporations to get more tax breaks. Trump and his close associates disdain ethical norms and the anti-corruption protections written into the US Constitution and federal law. The list of unethical and illegal behavior by President Trump and associates is too long for one letter. Trump gets to keep racking up the profits–and the conflicts–while serving as president, and then step right back into the business the day after he leaves the White House. While Trump and his family were in Saudi Arabia , the Saudis and the United Arab Emirates announced they’ll donate $100 million to Ivanka Trump’s charity for women entrepreneurs. Jared Kushner will not divest himself of 90 percent of his real estate assets, held by a myriad of shell companies that make monitoring conflicts nearly impossible. Donald Trump has exempted his entire senior staff from provisions of his own ethics rules to allow them to work with political and advocacy groups that support the administration. Ethics rules have also been waived for every other “commissioned officer”—staffers who report directly to the president—in the White House who has worked for a political group in the past two years. Trump is essentially promoting White House staffers collaboration with pro-Trump advocacy operations. The West Wing is stacked with officials who have made significant sums working, consulting for, or representing high-profile political organizations and advocating for special interests. He still refuses to disclose all ethics waivers issued to appointees administration-wide. Trump has also ordered federal agencies to spurn ranking Democratic lawmakers' oversight requests. The president's personal lawyer Michael Cohen rejected a request to cooperate voluntarily with probes into Russian interference in the 2016 election. How does an entire administration “lawyer up” with Michael Cohen? Trump's administration will cease answering questions from reporters about all areas under investigation into the Trump campaign's alleged ties to Russia. What will it take for you, Senator Toomey, to realize that Trump and his buddies are GUILTY, GUILTY, GUILTY? Reclaim you honor and counter their wickedness.

I strongly urge you to insist that any renegotiation of trade agreements such as NAFTA must include replacing the ISDS corporate court system, which tilts the playing field in favor of multinational capital, with new, strong standards that will protect workers and the environment in every country. Corporate courts in trade agreements such as TPP directly undermine your power and democracy itself, elevating even hoped-for corporate profits above all other law. They’re the steel jaws of international oligarchy, subjugating mere human beings and nation states to out-of-control corporate entities.

I urge you to oppose the border adjustment tax, which unfairly burdens consumers.

I urge you to oppose all direct and indirect fossil fuel subsidies in the budget. The report, Unequal Exchange: How Taxpayers Shoulder the Burden of Fossil Fuel Development on Federal Lands, presents an accounting of the minimum amounts of direct taxpayer dollars going to support fossil fuels on public lands, not including externalities such as climate and health impacts, which would bring the totals even higher. The federal government is providing extensive support for fossil fuel production on public lands and waters offshore, through a combination of direct subsidies, enforcement loopholes, lax royalty collection, stagnant lease rates and other advantages to the industry. The government is contributing at least $7 billion per year in subsidies to support fossil fuel production on federally held lands and offshore waters alone, and is holding some $35 billion in public liabilities for drilling in public waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

Thank you for objecting to the US withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accords.

FEMA is one of the agencies that have been targeted for significant cuts under the budget the president submitted to Congress. Under that budget, a program that helps states and communities take long-term measures to reduce losses from disasters, the Pre-Disaster Mitigation Grant Program, has been cut by more than 60 percent. The budget also eliminates funding for an ongoing effort to improve and redraw the nation's flood maps. This is a very harmful approach that's essentially saying that states are on their own, communities are on their own in terms of responding and recovering from these disasters, but states just don't have the budgets. For states and communities hit by floods, tornadoes, wildfires and other disasters, the Trump budget slashes another important source of recovery funds. The Department of Housing and Urban Development provides money that helps communities rebuild after a disaster, after FEMA has moved on. The Trump budget cuts that $3 billion fund to zero. I urge you to oppose these cuts.

Republican lawmakers want to allow people facing financial difficulties to be at the mercy of predatory lending practices that typically involve annual interest rates approaching 400%. Page 589, Section 733 of the Financial Choice Act contains a one-sentence provision that obliterates current efforts to bring fairness and responsibility to payday lenders and similar merchants of never-ending debt. It declares that federal authorities “may not exercise any rulemaking, enforcement or other authority with respect to payday loans, vehicle title loans or other similar loans.” I urge you to support the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s proposed rules last year to establish a reasonable baseline for how payday and title lenders should conduct themselves, and get the Financial Choice Act’s gift to predatory lenders deleted. A further threat comes from the American Bankers Association, which submitted a report to Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin last month calling for an end to the CFPB’s proposed payday-lending rules and seeking regulatory changes that would allow banks to issue their own payday loans. I urge you to block this plan.

I strongly urge you to insist that any renegotiation of trade agreements such as NAFTA must include replacing the ISDS corporate court system, which tilts the playing field in favor of multinational capital, with new, strong standards that will protect workers and the environment in every country. Corporate courts in trade agreements such as TPP directly undermine your power and democracy itself, elevating even hoped-for corporate profits above all other law. They’re the steel jaws of international oligarchy, subjugating mere human beings and nation states to out-of-control corporate entities.

I urge you to oppose the border adjustment tax, which unfairly burdens consumers.